Limits To Exploiting The Beaches?

Old photos. There are several social media blogs which dedicate themselves to old photos of Mallorca. They spark off nostalgia for times past. They show people, buildings, streets, vehicles, landscapes. All of them are of interest, but arguably the greatest interest - certainly for tourists to Mallorca - is reserved for the photographic histories of the resorts: the changes to the front lines, the hotels which have gone or have remained, the beaches as they were. The tourist, by the very nature of Mallorca's dominant sun and beach tourism, invests emotion most heavily in the resorts: they are the tourist's domain, the tourist's memories, the tourist's past, present and future.

Of some of these photos, there are those which show how beaches were in the days just prior to the tourism explosion and once the explosion had occurred. The contrasts are predominantly those of bodies and of what bordered the beaches. There is a particular one for Palmanova. It is not certain when it was taken, but probably in the 1950s. Absent is the development, absent is a crowded beach. But on the beach, or rather off it - as in the sea - is what might seem to be an oddity. It is a pedalo.

While it is reckoned that Leonardo da Vinci may have "invented" the pedalo, its mechanics were, much later, adapted from those of the paddle steamer. That there was, therefore, a pedalo in the fifties' photo should not be odd, but somehow it does seem odd. I mean, beaches were just beaches then. Weren't they? Beachgoers made their own fun without the aid of the beach attraction.

The pedalo can probably lay claim to having been the pioneer of such attractions and its iconic status was such that, when the first "WIsh You Were Here" was broadcast (1974), what else would Judith Chalmers be sitting on, drinking champagne at Magalluf beach than a pedalo.

But by the time of that broadcast another attraction was making itself known. It was altogether more powerful and noisier. The jet ski had arrived. It shared its name with a brand of tourist divorced from the mass hoi polloi, the jet set, and as such became de rigueur for the TV and cinema of spies and socialites who headed for the Riviera and were normally always played by Roger Moore and Sophia Loren.

Pioneer that the pedalo was, it was not responsible for introducing artificiality to beaches. There was plastic in ever increasing abundance, a perversely natural consequence of the ever increasing levels of humanity that invaded the beaches. But it was essentially benign. A pedalo doesn't make any noise. A jet ski, on the other hand, does. A pedalo requires only human leg power. A jet ski does not.

Coming up to the present day, there is a growing debate regarding the use of beaches and sea that centres on ever more plastic and ever more noise. And Colonia Sant Jordi is where this debate is currently at its most fierce. Last Sunday, around a hundred residents of the resort staged a protest against the plan to install a floating waterpark and to permit two platforms for jet skis. Their objection does have an element of antagonism towards a Spanish (and so not Mallorcan) operator and a French one, but there is also concern about environmental harm, noise pollution and the sight of the waterpark.

Such waterparks have emerged recently in different resorts and they haven't been greeted with overwhelming support from residents and tourists. But how strong is this opposition? While some tourists might object, others doubtless approve. However the feelings are either way, the Colonia Sant Jordi case highlights a broader debate. Just how much "exploitation" of beaches and the sea should there be?

There are plenty of rules intended to safeguard beaches and there are plenty of initiatives, like the Blue Flag, to ensure quality. Yet there is a great deal of  "privatisation" of beaches and the sea immediately by them. This is privatisation in the widest sense, i.e. private enterprises operating businesses, but it is something which rubs against deep-rooted feelings held by many a Mallorcan (and indeed Spaniard). Beaches, state-owned, are in the public domain. They are for the public to enjoy. This enjoyment, the complaint is made, is reduced by the excesses of privatisation, be these too many sun loungers that limit the use of the public domain, noise or multi-coloured plastic slides bobbing up and down on the sea.

And to these residents can be added the tourists with a sense of a shared common birthright to the simpler pleasures of what, in tourism terms, constitute Mallorca's greatest natural resource. But then maybe the exploitation is necessary. Gone are the days, it would seem, when all beachgoers could make their own fun. With or without the aid of a pedalo.